


To Feel the Way That Every Child Should

by unwittingcatalyst



Series: Season Three Missing Scenes [2]
Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: Bullying, Character Study, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Episode: s03e04 Phone Home, Friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-02
Updated: 2018-08-04
Packaged: 2019-05-17 12:00:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 6,541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14831906
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unwittingcatalyst/pseuds/unwittingcatalyst
Summary: After "Phone Home," Ray remembers his new timeline.





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to my daughter Alex for responding to this, and to my son Alistair--[GamerAlpha](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GamerAlpha)\--for assistance with _Undertale_ knowledge. 
> 
> I appreciate the lovely encouragement [avelera](https://archiveofourown.org/users/avelera) gave me, and I highly recommend her work.
> 
> Stacey has helped me greatly with encouragement and insightful suggestions that have helped me rework bits of chapters three and beyond. Her wonderful stories (my favorite is "Afraid of depending on it: Love") are here: [by_heart](https://archiveofourown.org/users/by_heart).
> 
> Hans has given me incredibly helpful feedback for Chapters 4 and 5; find their work here: [purpleyin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/purpleyin).
> 
> And thanks to [inkling](https://archiveofourown.org/users/inkling) for wonderfully helpful comments on Chapter 3; she's creakygeekery on Tumblr.
> 
> The title is from the _Tears for Fears_ song "Mad World."

When she first arrived on the Waverider, Zari didn’t know what to make of Ray’s enthusiasm about, well, nearly everything, but she tuned in a bit more when the topic was time travel.

He spoke animatedly as they walked through a hallway of the ship. “I used to imagine time travel differently—the butterfly effect. Basically, in an old SF story somebody visits the past and makes a tiny change—and then when they return to their own time, everything is different.” Surely this near-childlike excitement couldn’t be for real, Zari thought.

Zari crossed her arms. “You thought about time travel before the Waverider?” Zari replied skeptically.

Ray shrugged. “I saw Star Wars when I was four. That had me reading science fiction from all eras for the next several years—and then the local station started carrying _Doctor Who_.” He made a helpless motion. “So, yeah, I thought about this kind of thing a lot. Never believed time travel would be real—but I thought time would be more—sensitive—if it was.”

Zari was curious in spite of herself—and because of what it might mean for what she wanted to do. “But it’s not. Sara says ‘time wants to happen.’”

“Yeah. That’s what Rip always said when he first invited us on board. So, when a few of us spent a couple of years in the 1950s, it didn’t make any really significant changes.”

OK, Zari had to agree with Ray on this point, that that was kinda odd. And then too many things happened, and she didn’t think again about that conversation for a while.

*

They hit Ray on a quiet day, the new memories, and he was grateful for that.

He woke feeling them—his alien friend, the kind woman who’d saved his life and her odd friends. He also recalled some slightly different events in the days, weeks, and even years following all that. They existed side by side inside him, both valid, but clanging off each other sometimes, jarring, like a a double exposure on 35 millimeter film. 

He knew from Marty’s double memories of having a daughter and not having a daughter that soon his new memories would be all he had, so he sat down immediately to write both sets, to methodically sort through thoughts and feelings. He didn’t want to miss anything.

He of course did not have memories of the timeline when he’d been shot and killed as a child—only a news article that had never actually been written.

He wanted to know if these new events in his past had changed him in any significant ways—if becoming willing to commit petty theft for Gumball had done anything to his attitude to following the rules, if learning young that Gus and Ty had been bullies, not teasing friends, had done anything to change how he trusted people or how gullible he was, if having and saying goodbye to friends had done anything to how his life played out.

Looking carefully at the two timelines, with a clarity he knew he would not have later, he could not find that much difference. In both he’d honored authority, probably too much, though events in more recent years had shifted that somewhat, unrelated to either set of memories. He’d apparently always been willing to break rules for what truly mattered to him. 

He now remembered, a few weeks after the adventure he’d participated in at two ages, Gus and Ty losing their wariness of him and beating him up behind a dumpster in retaliation for their humiliation at Halloween. 

*  
_Ty and Gus asked him to come see something, a distance away from the school’s baseball field where there was a dumpster. As soon as they were there, Ray knew this was his opportunity to set things right._

_He stepped forward. “I want to say, it was wrong of me to let my friend take your Halloween candy. I shouldn’t have gone along with it—“_

_Gus was laughing and Ty pushed his shoulders so that he stumbled back into the side of the dumpster. They never let him finish his apology, nor did they let him get out his outraged speech about how while he’d been wrong, that didn’t make what they were doing right. The couple of punches they gave him to his stomach took his breath away and meant he couldn’t talk, anyway. When they left, he had his first black eye and blood coming out of his nose._

*

That was now the first time he’d dealt with bullying knowingly, as opposed to simple and usually subtle ostracization due to his doing too well on tests and having too much uncool enthusiasm for what the teachers taught and other uncool things. But this incident too didn’t seem to change his timeline. The only thing he could detect is that he’d experienced the shock and indignation at such an attack at an earlier age. The next—in the original timeline, first—had been in 8th grade. In his new memories, he’d been far more blasé about the 8th grade incident, resigned.

He paused, looking at that moment during the trick or treating, when Mick had stepped forward and threatened Ty and Gus with his heat gun. He now had the distant yet vivid feelings of his younger self then, who had had a bit of a crisis of conscience after. It had felt so good to be supported, for someone to have his back, but then he’d been ashamed that he hadn’t stopped Zari’s gruff friend: it had been so easy to go along with it, even laugh, in that moment, but it still had been a mean thing to do to Gus and Ty.

Ray marveled as he traced these thoughts through his new memories, and was pleased to recall a few other instances in later years when, instead of standing by passively or obliviously when something that benefited him, but was wrong, was happening, he’d stepped forward, objected. That had meant he’d been beaten up as a kid a few additional times, and he’d said no earlier to some business deals that didn’t feel right. And he’d raised more of a fuss when the team had dismissed or disregarded Mick. All this still had no significant effect on the timeline, but Ray was nevertheless glad for it. 

Meanwhile, he’d somehow kept his willingness to see the best in people, to trust them—if he hadn’t, Rip wouldn’t have been able to trick him onto this ship.  


And then, there were his new friends at age eight. In the original timeline, he’d had none (had thought Gus and Ty teasing him was friendship, though the stories he read told him of loyalties and bonds that were nowhere in suburban Ivy Town). It had been a dull loneliness, a wall between himself and other people, broached only and in minor ways by occasional teachers who took an interest in him and by family—well, his mom—there for him but not exactly understanding him.

In the new timeline, he had a shining memory of friendship now, as adventurous and warm as any from a story. It had ended in sorrow that had shown him how empty his life was. In the original timeline, he hadn’t quite come to that realization of emptiness until high school.

Had it made any difference? Not really. He’d just, in the new timeline, had one more story to think about and idealize, one he’d actually been a part of. It had been important to him, though for years he’d told no one about it—he’d promised.

The new memory that came to him then stunned him—with Anna in their favorite park, not long after meeting her, telling her of the kindness he’d known from a stranger at age eight. He’d warned her, laughing nervously, that she’d find some of it hard to believe, but there’d been no judgment in Anna’s eyes, only compassion, only understanding. And then, joyful merriment. She’d laughed at his description of Gumball and Gumball’s love of musicals, but he’d talked more of the dark eyed woman who’d helped him, who’d understood him, whose defiant protectiveness of him and warm affection for him he’d trusted utterly.  


Zari had been a distant, dear memory then, a true friend when he had not expected one. Now, Zari was nearby on the ship, and Anna was the distant and dear memory.

Ray took time to feel that, to cherish this gift, this new memory of Anna. Though it too had not changed anything significant about how he and Anna had played out—apparently “time wanted to happen” with them—it still shook him, to have that, and he spent part of the morning writing out every detail of it that he could recall, letting himself feel shaky and tender gratitude for Anna’s presence in his life.

Mid-morning, he pulled himself together and sought out his childhood friend.


	2. Chapter Two

Turns out, she was playing a videogame—Undertale (“I heard rumors of this one growing up but never could find it on the black market”). She offered for him to play, but he begged off, and sat and watched her instead, pretending to work on a project. 

He tried to reconcile his new memories with this person in front of him, and now he understood so much more about how she’d been then. He hadn’t recognized her impatience, only her urgency, but he’d seen right through both to her frightened courage. He remembered the confrontation with the mean government men, remembered her clutching him close when they’d both been in danger, remembered feeling cared for.

Now, he knew so much more about her, and it made so much more sense—family, and children, meant everything to Zari, and when his eight year old self had met her, she’d just lost all of that, and yet she’d been brave enough to protect him anyway.

This person in front of him wasn’t the kind adult he’d idealized all these years—she was an irritable video game player, talking back to the game—and yet she was the same kind and smart and mysterious woman. If he’d believed in them, then or now, he would have thought her an angel. As a child he had effortlessly seen past what few walls she’d put up to younger him, and now, if he looked just right, he could also see right past them.

The part of him that remembered the whole adventure vividly felt overjoyed to see her again, to know her now—he’d missed her so much, as much as Gumball at first, and even more than the alien, through the years.

Zari paused the game—she’d been dodging undying spears in Waterfall—and glanced over at him with narrowed eyes. “You’re being weird,” she reproached. 

“Nothing new there,” he replied with a slight smile. 

“True. But, really, what’s up with you? You’re never this quiet when I’m playing.”

“It’s been a strange day for me. I just remembered my new timeline.”

Her eyes got bigger and she set the controls aside. “Oh. That’s gotta be—“ she shook her head. “You OK?”

He hurried to reassure her. “Yes, I’m fine—no headaches even—“

At her puzzled look he explained. “When Marty changed the timeline and suddenly had a daughter, he had headaches when all the new memories of her growing up hit him—temporal dissonance with his old memories. I don’t have nearly so many changes to remember.”

“I wondered about that. So, meeting aliens—and, us—when you were eight didn’t change you or your world view?” she asked, her tone doubtful.

He huffed ruefully. “Apparently not. I already lived in stories and movies and daydreams, when I wasn’t doing my homework. This was just one more adventure, only it actually happened.”

She shook her head again and smiled at him. He saw the same fond amusement in her eyes that he remembered from long ago, and felt a pang of longing, the longing he’d felt so many years, wanting a true friend. He’d wondered sometimes if he had daydreamed it all, but no—it had been real, was real right now. “Of course you did,” she said. “You didn’t take to heart the talk you gave yourself, about coming back to the real world?”

“No—I didn’t expect it would work anyway.”

She looked faintly concerned.

“I really missed you,” he admitted then, speaking quickly. He realized that in this new timeline he’d always wanted the chance to say this to her. “I didn’t have friends and—you were kind to me, in a way even the nicest teachers weren’t.”

She looked pained. “Oh Ray.”

He smiled warmly. “I know this is going to sound odd, but it’s good to see you again—and, know who you are, that you were her.”

“This must be so weird for you.” She still had that thoughtful, slightly worried look on her face. “There’s something I’ve been wondering, and now that you remember—were you OK, after we left?”

“Overall, yeah. I was sad, to have to say goodbye. I don’t just mean Gumball. It was kinda worse, saying good bye to you.”

She looked taken aback at that. “I shouldn’t be surprised to hear that. You were pretty broken up. I hated walking away from your Camelot hideout—and, I saw and heard. Before I left.”

*

Zari recalled vividly the hero worship in young Ray’s eyes—oddly pointed at her, not his older self or any of the others. It had been—disconcerting.

Ray, next to her, smiled to himself, and spoke words that had her wondering for a second if he could read minds. “I guess I’m egotistical enough to think that I read people pretty well, and apparently I did, at least then.” He looked up at her. “I thought you were the coolest person I’d ever met—wise and brave and strong and smart—“

His smile became brilliant. “And see? I was right about all of it.”

Zari heard fond appreciation in Ray’s voice and—just could not deal. Just, no.

He’d seen her at her least together, had seen her falling apart and grumpy, she’d tricked the entire team when they’d first met, and he’d always been so damn kind, and he still thought this of her?

To cope, she shifted the subject a little and asked him what he remembered now from that adventure.


	3. Chapter 3

_Young Ray’s perspective:_

The trick or treating had been stupendous. All of Zari’s friends—and they were his friends, too, now, sort of—had shown up, most in costumes that were far more than anything Ivy Town had ever seen, and, Ray knew, they were not really costumes (Ray would keep that secret, even if he didn’t fully understand it himself). Zari’s, though, was a costume, and she didn’t like it. She was right: that kind of thing was too uncomfortable and restrictive, and he wanted to talk with her about that, dig out his comics and tell his ideas about how superhero costumes should be designed differently. (If Gene Kelly could wear a suit in _Singing in the Rain_ that he could dance in, then why couldn’t superheroes wear practical costumes they could move easily in too?) But there didn’t seem to be much time.

Still, it was cool that he’d gotten looks of respect from other kids, even Ty and Gus. It had been great. But maybe he would rather have shown Zari the movie instead, watched it with her. Even through the trick or treating, she stuck close to him. She’d done so ever since the government men had threatened him, and that felt nice.

After the trick or treating, her friends left, back to wherever they came from, including the one who was The Atom—Ray never caught his name. It had felt strange, talking to him. He had good taste in music and dancing, and had things to say to him about his daydreaming that he already knew, kind of. He’d try to do what he said.

But Zari stuck around a little while, telling the one who was obviously in charge, Sara, that she needed some time, and that they _had_ time, with a significant look that told Ray they had a secret he wasn’t supposed to figure out.

And then, instead of watching a movie, they had just gone to the hideout in the woods, with the large Camelot sign over the door, and talked for a long time, sitting inside. Ray’d never had anyone else (besides Gumball) to share this place with, and he’d never felt so listened to before as he talked about what he loved—the stories he read and watched and the ones he made up in his head and his ideas for things he could make. She asked questions about it all that showed she was really paying attention and really understood what he was saying. Ray made sure to be polite and ask her questions too—and it wasn’t just politeness: he really wanted to know more about her.

Though she’d shown up dressed to look just like other people he knew in his town, Ray had known from the start that she was different, that she was from a different place entirely. When she mentioned she was Muslim he thought for a moment that might be it--and he had wanted to ask her so many questions, but they were kind of busy then--and besides, he could research that on his own. No, there was something else, and it was all about how she showed up already knowing about Gumball and what was going on, kind of. And he immediately sensed that he wasn’t supposed to know the answers to those questions. Even though she was so cool, she still was an adult, and he knew really well how they were when he wanted to know something that they didn’t want him to know.

And there was the fact that she could fly and make other people able to _fly_ too--he wanted to know about that so much, and that, too, he knew she couldn’t talk about.

But after her kind words, he wanted to know more about _her_ , anyway. That was more important than any of the other stuff. He asked her about what she liked to do, and then about her friends and her family. And suddenly she looked so sad, and then she smiled bravely at him and answered truthfully but vaguely, not mentioning the sad part. It was something bad, he could tell.

He didn’t know what to say. She’d have to leave soon, and she was never coming back, he knew, which only gave him a sick feeling. 

“I wish you were my sister. I wish I had a sister, and she was you,” he blurted out.

At that she looked like she was about to cry, and then she gave him a hug. It made Ray want to cry too.

Then she said some kind things to him. She didn’t tell him not to give up, and she didn’t remind him to keep up with his learning. She seemed to know that she didn’t have to tell him these things. Instead she said again that he needed to remember there’d be people out there who would be his friends, that he shouldn’t give up on that. She said that they’d be fortunate to have him as a friend, since he was so loyal and courageous. He only nodded solemnly at her, a dread building in him—this sounded like goodbye.

He tried to be brave, he really did, but he couldn’t help crying when she really did say goodbye and got up to go.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbled, wiping his eyes with his shirt sleeve.

She got fierce then, crouching back down so she was level with him, her hands on his shoulders. “Don’t be. Don’t ever be ashamed of feeling like this. You have a kind heart and your friends are going to need that.” 

She was talking about friends he hadn’t met yet, and he was not so sure as she was that he’d ever find them. How would she even know something like this? It sounded too much like the kind of thing adults said when they wanted to believe something. But Ray knew, they weren’t always right.

But he’d believe her about the crying. It always seemed wrong when other kids made fun of kids, not just him, and especially but not just boys, who cried. It wasn’t bad to feel things so strongly, either—Zari was saying it could be a way to help people, even.

When they hugged goodbye, and she left, he cried as hard and long as he needed to. 

*  
 _Zari’s perspective during “Phone Home”:_

The kid looked skeptical as she raved on about friendship in his future again, and she couldn’t blame him. Good to know Ray sometimes had some kind of common sense, even this young.

“I’m never going to see you again, am I?” He said this with an attempt at a brave tone, but she could see he was going to be crying soon.

She looked at him helplessly. It would do him no good to promise that he would—that would be half a lifetime away for him, and it would be cruel to give him that hope, to leave him waiting for years. And how the hell had she become so important to this child? It was a testimony to how he didn’t really have anyone else who in any way got him. A bit of a listening ear, and she knew she’d won his undying loyalty.

“It’s OK,” he was saying. He smiled, and that was just painful to look at, the effort it was taking the kid. “I still got to meet you now. And you really helped me, and saved my life, too.”

OK, she knew how she could do this. She stood, and nodded solemnly. “You are a true knight, Sir Raymond. It is my own good fortune, that our paths have crossed this way.”

Now young Ray was smiling—grinning even—for real, a light in his eyes. He stood as well, and bowed to her. “Lady Zari, Rider of the Winds, you—you—the good fortune is mine, and I am forever in your debt.” 

She smiled back, breaking character, and opened her arms to him. His small ones wrapped around her.

“I won’t forget you,” he promised into her shirt.

“No danger of me forgetting you either,” she assured him, returning his hug.


	4. Chapter 4

Thinking of the kid she’d left alone in his secret hideout, thinking of the things he’d said to her, Zari admitted, “Young you kinda tore my heart out.” Ray looked slightly taken aback at hearing this—OK, good, she wasn’t the only one having to deal with hearing uncomfortably emotional things this morning. “And when you said you wanted me to be your sister—“

“What?” Ray interrupted, bewildered and distant, and then his eyes got wider. “I remember,” he said softly.

After a few moments, the distant look evaporated and he was looking right at her with compassion and remorse. “Oh, Z, I’m sorry.”

Zari was about to say she was fine when she realized—he wasn’t just thinking of what her feelings must have been then, he really was apologizing as though he’d done something wrong. She laughed and pushed his shoulder. “You didn’t know!”

His face relaxed but he still looked concerned. 

“And I’m not so breakable that a kid saying that to me—“ she was going to reassure him she was completely fine, but her voice was going all rough now, betraying her. “Oh crap. Not again.”

OK, this was happening too damn much lately—she’d be going about her day and then suddenly, inconveniently, in the middle of something else entirely, it’d hit: hollow despair and the physical ache of longing to see her family again.

And if she was with someone else who noticed, it was so much harder because she couldn’t escape, couldn’t pretend nothing was wrong.

A consoling hug was always on offer from Ray when she got like this.

She clutched her hand on his shoulder. And then just gave in and turned to him and hid her face on his shoulder instead. She was half relieved and half embarrassed that he was used to this by now: with little trace of his typical awkwardness, he put his arms around her as she cried, again. It was reassuring, to have him there. She covered her face with her other hand and shuddered a bit. “Just give me a moment,” she muttered, and he murmured something soothing, his arms staying around her in a gentle bear hug. 

Zari almost laughed through her tears then when it hit her—now Ray was playing the role of big brother instead of little brother. She was most definitely not going to tell him that. At this point, she might not manage it without a fresh bout of crying, especially since the memory of her dead Uncle Nouri’s safe and enveloping hugs was also never far from her at moments like this.

After a little while (“Whatever you need” he always said) she looked up. “Thanks.”

And there was that small, warm smile. “Sure.” 

She pulled back and sat up, wiping her eyes, suddenly self-conscious again. This happened sometimes when she got upset unexpectedly.

“You didn’t know what you were getting into when you kept pestering me to talk with you,” she said, low and subdued but with a sharpness toward herself, pulling inward. “I mean, why should you have to put up with this—this weepiness—“

“Z, you’re my friend. If I can help, why wouldn’t I want to?” He said it kindly and matter-of-factly, the most obvious thing in the world to him. 

Zari just stared and it suddenly made complete, perfect sense that this man, with all his earnest caring, was the person that kid had grown up to become. That kid, so idealistic, for whom friendship mattered more than anything—yeah. She smiled through her tears and gave him a mock look of disbelief. “You know, sometimes I find it hard to believe that you’re for real.”

He laughed, and Zari was pleased that he took it for the affectionate teasing it was.

She continued, grumbly-voiced. “You’d think that time travel would be the thing I’d think didn’t make sense, but you—if I hadn’t met you, younger, and if I couldn’t see how he could become you—then, I just wouldn’t believe this.”

She took a deep breath. She was done with heavy grief for the moment.

“So.” She said, desperate to get back to what passed for normalcy on this ship. “Uh—how are you doing with all this? With, what, two sets of memories right now.”

His eyebrows quirked and his eyes got that searching look for a moment. He asked without words, _are you sure you want to shift the topic this way?_

When she waited stubbornly for his answer, he began to stumble out a reply. “Ah, well, it’s not exactly something I’ve experienced before, but—it’s interesting. It won’t last long—soon I’ll just have the new memories.”

She decided to help him out. “One thing I don’t get. You—eight year old you—never asked a lot of questions about what was going on. I mean—an _alien._ And, all of us suddenly showing up. You knew we’d have to leave, but didn’t ask who we were or where we were going.”

Ray shrugged. “I lived in the stories in my head. All of you fit those stories. And I knew you couldn’t stay—that’s just how the stories worked. Sure, later I thought back and tried to come up with rational explanations for all of it. I figured that either I’d imagined it all or—or that what drew me to the stories also existed for real: aliens, and corrupt officials, and heroic people who showed up to help. I thought maybe you were a member of an elite and secret group devoted to protecting people.”

*  
Eventually, Ray returned to the reason he’d come to visit her.

“You just became a really important person to me. Not that you weren’t before—but, meeting you when I was a child and you were so kind to me—you know, in addition to saving my life—“ He shook his head wonderingly. 

Zari groaned. “Stop that. You’re gonna make me cry again.”


	5. Chapter 5

Later:

They took turns with the single-player game for a bit, but the tightness in Zari’s chest and throat were back for a while. She tried talking about it.

Zari ate another mouthful of popcorn and stared into the mid-distance. “I just don’t know what to do with it. I mean, being on this ship helps, I guess. If nothing else, you’re all just so entertainingly strange, and sometimes we almost die and have to deal with something terrifying, so that’s a distraction, but—none of that really matters.” She stopped and glanced at Ray, who was looking thoughtful. “It doesn’t change this thing in me—this vast hole of awful nothingness. I’m never going to see them again, the people who made me who I am, who are part of me. I mean, they probably died terrible, painful deaths, but I’m not even to that part of grieving them yet.” _Except when I close my eyes to sleep. Nope, not talking about that right now._ She exhaled. “I’m just—they aren’t there, any more, and that doesn’t make sense, and nothing makes sense."

Ray nodded, looking haunted. Zari thought that maybe he wished he didn’t understand the part of that that he did.

“And I guess I’m making something new, here—having adventures, learning things, making friends—but all that’s on a foundation of fucking nothing. I feel like I should be better at this. I feel like I’m missing something.”

She looked over at him pleadingly. It wasn’t fair to expect him to have an answer, she knew. She still wanted one.

The reply this drew out of him was subdued and serious. 

“You’re aren’t missing anything. I don’t think there is a thing you can do. I tried—built the suit, tried to become someone who could help people, keep them safe—and all of that is fine, and I’d do it again, but it didn’t do anything to help, really. At most, it was a distraction, but the—the grief, it’s always still there.”

She spoke gently then. “People tell me that. The story on you is that you built the suit because your fiancée died and you never wanted to be helpless when someone was being hurt again.”

Ray looked down.

“I don’t buy it,” Zari said flatly.

He glanced up quizzically at her.

“I think you were going to do things to help people no matter what. You were going to invent things no matter what. That kid I met—he was already headed that way. If she hadn’t died, you still would have done things. Maybe different things, maybe in a different order, with her support and with you supporting what _she_ was doing. ‘Time wants to happen,’ right?”

He didn’t look like he was disagreeing with her. There was a diffident sadness in his eyes, something he wanted to but couldn’t hide from her.

“I mean, it could be a nice thought, the idea that when horrible things happen good can come from that. But I think the good can happen anyway, and the horrible things are just senseless.”

“If tragedy happens, we have a choice in how we respond.” He spoke with a strange lightness and with utter certainty, stating one of his core truths.

Zari looked at him questioningly. Something was—missing—from that. She thought for a moment about the time Ray had grown up in, and the secure and safe little town—lonely for him, yes, but besides this anachronism, he’d never had to run from evil militaristic forces. “Yeah—but sometimes choices get pretty restricted, depending on who we are and where we are,” she pointed out. She wanted to say much more to Ray about this, and she made a mental note to bring it up again later. He had a thoughtful expression on his face—maybe he’d be open to that particular rant. For now, she continued, “I chose to become a criminal, after all.”

Ray smiled delightedly at that. “That was an amazing choice. You used those skills to resist corruption and cruelty and to help people.” There was naked admiration in his voice that distracted Zari a moment until she got back to her original point. 

“Yeah, but I’d rather have not had to do that. I can buy that, sometimes, we can choose our responses to awful things, circumstances allowing. But can’t we just have the choice without the tragedy?”

They continued the conversation, Ray still quiet and thoughtful in his responses. He wasn’t giving any detail about his own grief, and Zari knew he avoided talking about it—his habitual deference to her own expression of grief, and whatever other reasons he had. But he was thinking about it, she could tell. They were both already raw and torn open from this conversation—well, she was (nothing new there) and the look in his eyes told her enough—plus, of course he would be, remembering a new thread through his life. That had to shake a person up.

Finally she burst out with--

“Look, am I fucking up here? You didn’t ask to talk about this—your tragedy.”

“Uh, no, it’s OK. I don’t mind.” He paused. “In fact, she’s another reason I have to be grateful to you.”

Zari stared in utter bewilderment.

“This morning. I remembered. See, for years, I never told anyone about what happened when I was eight—I had promised you not to, and it seemed wise. A lot of people didn’t take what I wanted to talk about seriously anyway, and a story about an alien and the real reason the government had taken over the rec center that one fall didn’t sound like it would help. But—I made sure to remember you. And the first time I ever told anyone was Anna. And—now I have that memory, of telling her. A new memory of her to cherish.”

“Uh,” she stammered, sitting up straighter and watching him closely. She felt like she was seeing past his usual cheerful self to something else--wistful, sad, and yet there was a real joy there in the gratitude of his words. Zari put a hand on his arm, and found herself asking, “What did she say?” 

He smiled fondly and distantly. “She was happy I’d had a real friend when I was a kid.”

Zari’s curiosity got the better of her then. “Tell me. Who was she? What would she have done if she’d lived?—no, wait, you don’t have to talk about that, that’s—I’m an idiot—forget I asked.”

He held up a hand and smiled. “No, it’s OK. I—I want to answer that. It’s not something people ask me much—and—I think, I know, she would have done so much.”

He then proceeded to speak with such pain and joy and love of Anna Loring. He painted a vivid picture of a dynamic woman—kind, shrewd, honorable, sneaky, strong-willed. His belief in her was clear.

“We were the most important people in each other’s lives.” He shook his head ruefully as he spoke the next words. “We were so young. We’d have eventually grown to share more beyond each other—she was already doing that, always more courageous than I was.” 

He tried to explain how sometimes other folks thought of her as difficult. “I never understood that. And lots of people didn’t seem to get her—“ and at this he paused, and said with a small, proud smile, “but I did.”

He never quite said it, but Zari could tell that he thought she should have lived instead of him, and--Zari felt that. She wasn’t sure she liked it, but it was no different than how she felt about Behrad. 

He told her details and stories that made clear how the tragedy of Anna’s death was far more than its impact on him. Zari asked questions about Anna, and saw Ray’s face light up with gratitude when he could tell she was really interested in knowing who Anna was, not just pitying him for having to endure her loss.

They ended up talking about the kind of video games she’d liked, and of course Zari talked about Behrad again, and it felt so good, even if they both cried a bit sometimes, to break the rules like this and speak so vividly of the people they’d loved.

Zari realized she wanted the same for Behrad—she didn’t want Ray to feel sorry for her that she’d lost him, she wanted him to know who Behrad had been, how important he was, how crappy he’d been at first playing Legend of Zelda, how he’d known exactly how to sneak up on her and make her laugh. 

Of course, what she really wanted was to use this time ship and get him the hell out of there—

\--but in the meantime, she wanted someone else to know who he was, as fully as possible, to know how amazing he’d been. That’s what Ray’s completely attentive listening did, and Zari was more than happy to return the favor.

*

They returned their attention to the game after grabbing lunch and relocating to the library. Ray had strategy ideas for playing the mercy route, which he’d done during his last extensive time in 2017.

“Behrad would have loved this game,” Zari said. Her voice was unsteady but she was determined to keep talking through it. They discussed sneaky tactics and computer ghosts, and then Zari jumped back into the game.

*

Martin Stein had encountered a particularly fascinating phenomenon related to the time stream, and he’d developed some theories about how the laws of physics worked there, and he had to tell someone. Meaning, of course, Raymond. He could tell anyone else on the ship, but no one but Raymond (and perhaps Gideon, but her smugness was irritating) would quite understand, and be as excited, and offer insights that would help even Martin grasp the situation more clearly.

He was headed to find Raymond when he heard it--laughter, coming from the library. Ah, game playing. Ray was cheering on Ms. Tomaz as she, apparently, accomplished another objective in the game, something about conveyor belts in the hotlands and an interfering textbox. Martin had no idea what any of that meant.

Martin was slightly disappointed, but he could catch up with his fellow scientist later. He smiled indulgently to himself, pleased that, amidst the stress of their missions, the two of them could both behave in such a child-like way, and share such simple joys together. They all, perhaps, needed a bit more of that on this ship.


End file.
